The Immediate Effects of Crime on Your Marriage and Family

Jun 29

There are so many ways for your marriage and family life to be destroyed, and one of those ways is getting involved in crime. But how heavily it will affect marriage and family will depend on a variety of factors, such as the following:

Nature of the crime

Victim of the crime

When the crime has happened

The number of crimes you have in your record

However, according to the website of the Law Offices of Mark T. Lassiter, criminal charges can be defended, so they don’t elevate into convictions. But when all is said and done and you are actually convicted, how will this affect your marriage and family life, exactly?

Yourself

First, let’s talk about yourself and how the bulleted factors above can relate to you. The nature of the crime is important, because a worse crime means that you will have to face bigger penalties, such as bigger fines that can be financially troublesome and longer jailtimes.

But minor offenses, such as a single drunk driving offense, may not influence your life that much. The key word there is single.

Your Spouse

Your spouse, and to an extent also your children, is greatly affected by the second factor – the victim of the crime. If your spouse has been the victim of domestic violence, spousal rape, or any other domestic issues, your entire marriage may be in trouble, and the court may even issue protections that will prevent you from getting near your spouse or your children, depending on who has been the victim.

You can try marriage counseling to try and fix the damage, but there are some damages that are not worth fixing. In the event of a divorce, you will also likely have the shorter end of the stick.

Your Children

When a divorce does take place, it is also likely that there will be child custody and support issues, where again, you will not be in the proper position to win because of your criminal record. The bulleted factors above may be considered in concluding that you are not mentally fit to help your children, especially in their development stage, so the court may limit even your visitation rights.

At the end of the day, how the crime can affect your family life will truly depend on the bulleted factors above. Simple offenses where there is no victim, or the victim is not an immediate family member, will likely not influence your family life that much. But on instances where the crime is serious and the victim is your spouse or your children, they can easily snowball and destroy your marriage and family faster than you think.